"His hair is big," said Bianca, holding her hands a few inches from her head.

In the grand tradition of family fun that takes months to prepare and mere minutes to actually do, cascarones give Easter a festive kick.

Rather than hard-boiled eggs, this Mexican custom uses hollowed-out eggs without their tops. Cascarones — from the Spanish cáscara, or shell — are eggshells that have been dyed or painted, filled with confetti and then closed with a tissue-paper cap. Easter morning becomes a frenetic free-for-all, with multiple generations lovingly smashing cascarones over each other's heads.

"It's a very familiar Mexican tradition and somewhat of a representation of the resurrection of Christ," explained Esmeralda "Liz" Salinas, program director for Multicultural Education and Counseling through the Arts, a Houston nonprofit. "When you break one onto someone's head, the confetti is the celebratory aspect. It's symbolic of new birth, new life, new opportunity."

And it's fun like piñatas are fun, minus the blindfold and stick.

Making cascarones is a labor of love, usually a group effort with family and friends. It takes months to stockpile the eggshells, hours to dye and decorate them, and just minutes to blow through dozens.

This year, Bianca Davis made 19 dozen cascarones with her sister Olivia, 5, and her aunt Gloria Moreno.

"In our family, we've had an Easter picnic since before I was born," said Moreno, 44. "Part of the celebration is having as many cascarones as possible."

Moreno and her sisters Susan Moreno and Cathy Rivera save eggshells all year and spend the week before Easter making cascarones. The family picnic at Hermann Park draws at least 50 people, so they need a lot of confetti-filled eggs.

"If it's your first time to our picnic, you are initiated with cascarones," Moreno explained. "And it's usually while you're carrying a load of stuff from the car."

It's best to build cascarones outdoors and enlist help from kids, who are drawn to the promise of sanctioned destruction.

"I like making them," said Amelia Roden, 9, of Pearland, who assembled cascarones with her brother Gabe on a recent afternoon. "It's fun. It's crafty."

Those too young to use scissors can spin the hollow eggs around in egg dye or put stickers on them. Older children can cut the tissue-paper caps, stuff the confetti and then glue the caps on top.

Getting hit with cascarones is supposed to bring good luck. Their origin is difficult to pinpoint, but many believe the hollowed-out eggs started in China centuries ago and made their way to Europe. At the time, they were filled with perfumed powder.

Cascarones gained popularity in Mexico about 150 years ago. Some say Emperor Maximilian's wife brought them from Europe in the 1860s, while others contend that the first lady is credited with far more than she deserves.

"It was definitely a tradition imported from Europe in the mid-19th century," allows Luis Salinas, a sociology professor at the University of Houston, "but the idea of paper confetti is much more recent. The 1950s is what we're thinking."

Part of the appeal of cascarones is that they are economical, using items that would ordinarily be discarded. Anyone who uses a hole punch or paper shredder, for example, has instant confetti.

Although cascarones are sold all over Mexico, the U.S. Department of Agriculture forbids bringing them across the border because the eggshells could spread exotic Newcastle's disease, a contagious and fatal virus affecting most species of birds. Fines for sneaking the confetti-filled eggs north of the border can be as high as $1,000.

The tradition is just starting to creep outside Hispanic culture, with schoolchildren, especially in border states, making them in school. "Cascarones are another way of celebrating Easter that is somehow tied in with the Anglo celebration, but without the rabbit," said Luis Salinas.

Their growing popularity in the U.S. is evident in their increasing availability in grocery stores. But that's no fun. The pleasure of smashing them is sweetest when you've toiled to create them.

"There is such joy from children when they see all the different colors blowing in the wind," said Esmeralda Salinas. "Whether we think of it in religious terms, cultural terms or artistically, it's all good. It's all with the intent of sharing a tradition, sharing an opportunity of familia coming together. From the very youngest to the very oldest, everyone gets to be part of the celebration."